“Tarot” Doesn’t Show All Of His Cards, Unfortunately | Review
Horror movies have taught us that almost any object can be cursed, summon spirits or demons, and cause trouble for the characters. There are some objects whose potential to be scary is simply more tremendous. When considering the characteristics of tarot cards, one might ask why we haven’t seen many movies about them. I remember some scenes involving tarot cards in several movies, such as Sam Raimi’s crazy “Drag Me to Hell” and even Peter Jackson’s “Braindead,” but I find it hard to remember a film that put the cards at the center, or resurrected the familiar characters that appear on them. Does the movie “Tarot,” as it claims to offer this exciting narrative, actually do the job?
A few months ago when I saw the trailer for “Tarot” and read the plot summary a few months ago, I guessed we probably wouldn’t get a masterpiece here (horror rules #543543: in movies where the plot description includes “a group of young people,” you can expect stupid and illogical decisions, which end in cheap jump scares). I did expect a movie that would be fun, or at least one that would be fun to laugh at. Despite the film’s rather negative reviews and its many problems, I must say that I immensely enjoyed “Tarot” and that it has some decent moments. Read this following “Tarot” movie review to see if you should see it.
Tarot Plot Summary: When Tarot Cards Become Cursed Horror Objects
One of the rules of tarot cards, we’re told at one point in the film, is that you shouldn’t mess with someone else’s deck of cards. When a group of young people rent an isolated mansion in the Cascade Mountains of New York State to celebrate a birthday, they play all kinds of games that young people in horror movies do because they tend to be stupid.
At some point, the friends discover that they have run out of alcohol, which is a big problem in a teen horror movie. Soon, they realize that in the room to which entry is prohibited, with a warning sign, there are tempting bottles of alcohol. They also find a strange-looking box with tarot cards, and one of the girls, who has read enough about the subject on Google, decides to read the cards to everyone, claiming it is one of the most accurate tools for predicting the future.
The film is very reminiscent of other horror works with the familiar storyline but different evil objects, such as the films “Ouija,” “Talk to Me,” or “Countdown” ” In such movies, a particular object using jump scares to evoke a curse, evil demons or scary creatures, with some twists.
In general, “Tarot” presents a reasonably familiar idea but takes it into the playing field of tarot, astrology, and everything in between. We discover the cursed cards can predict how each character will die and which figure from the cards will kill them. Most importantly, it can make these scenes come to life – or death – very quickly.
Here is “Tarot” trailer:
Interesting Concept, Same Outcome
Is that enough to be original? Probably not, because in practice, we get a narrative structure that is far from original. Suppose you have watched enough supernatural horror films emphasizing the subgenre of cursed objects. The characters in the film are struggling to escape their fate in a way that reminds a little too much of the “Final Destination” movies, the realization that there are cursed objects they must understand their origins (yes, including the must-have scene of a meeting in the middle of the night with a strange woman who has encountered the curse before), the attempt to understand what can do to end the cycle and break the curse before everyone dies, and so on.
It doesn’t seem to matter what precisely that cursed object is: tarot cards, a phone app, a cursed hand, a piece of furniture, jeans, hamburgers, or anything else – in practice, the narrative structure of these types of films just seems too similar. It’s like taking any movie about a haunted house with all its overused formulas and simply defining that the haunted item is – just an example, which, of course, is not related to any movie from recent years – a cursed swimming pool. However, surprisingly, I enjoy most films that follow this principle, which can be a guilty pleasure or even successful.
So why is it even problematic? In my opinion, when you understand the game’s rules very quickly, some scenes become predictable. There is no building of genuine tension or anxiety for the fate of the characters, and it is easy to forget what is supposed to happen to each character, according to the tarot reading. With all due respect to the main character’s knowledge of tarot, astrology, or whatever, at the beginning of the film, she delivers a complete psychological analysis of each character regarding the past, present, and future on several levels. Of course, the viewer does not remember what the fate of the characters is expected to be and sometimes finds out about it in retrospect, through the flashbacks, or in the voice-over. It has some advantages, but it took me out of the scene in some cases.
The main problem is that the movie is just too predictable. The tension goes down when you see a character and know its ending is near. When a character makes stupid decisions that increase the chances of a brutal death, we lose faith in the script, identification with the characters, and connection to the plot. Even in this situation, we can get effective scares, a fantastic design of the evil characters, and some gore. It happens occasionally, but I think the film didn’t take enough risks.
The Main Problem: Tarot Keeps The Cards Close To The Chest
Spencer Cohen and Anna Halberg wrote and directed “Tarot” in their. The film is based on the 1992 book “Horrorscope” by British writer Nicholas Adams. The book dealt with a different subject – a serial killer who chooses his victims according to what the cards show him – and deciding to take the story into the supernatural field seems interesting.
The main question is how exactly to convey the story; my opinions are pretty divided. Cohen has served as a writer and executive producer of several films, mainly action or science fiction, such as “Extinction” (2018) or “Expend4bles” (2023), and this is the first time he has directed a full-length film. Halberg, who has collaborated with him on several projects, directs for the first time as well. It could very well be that their lack of experience is evident in the film because there is a rather oppressive feeling of Untapped potential throughout.
It starts with the creatures themselves. The idea that each character has a terrible destiny and the terrible character who is supposed to fulfill it is exciting. The creatures, for the most part, also look great – at least when you see them in the frame. Perhaps because it is a PG-13 film, which means that even a relatively young audience can see it without a parent accompanying it, most of the killing is done implicitly or out of frame. In some cases, there is a decent build-up in a few minutes, which ends disappointingly, like scenes involving a train or a the fool in an elevator, without spoilers.
Beyond the potential unreliability in a situation where we may discover that, in one of the cases, a character we thought was dead is not really dead (not that I’m implying anything), the film somehow misses the opportunity to be unique and less routine.
“Tarot” relies primarily on predictable scares, including jump scares that are easy to see coming, and less on creepy encounters with creatures that could be scary if they let us see them or focus more on what they do to the characters. This is evident in almost every encounter of a character with the representation of their “card,” whether The Hanged Man, The High Priestess, The Hermit, The Fool, The Magician, The Devil or Death itself. Some killing scenes are cut too quickly, implied, or do not show what is interesting to see (without being sadistic, of course ).
“Tarot” manages to build a scary atmosphere in several moments, mainly through the design of the characters, the photography, and the setting, and sometimes I find these aspects excellent. However, the film has difficulty going to the end or ending them successfully. That’s why, at a certain point, the movie starts to lose momentum. Some would even say it is boring.
Tarot Cast: Young Names, Some Are Promising
As can be deduced from the film’s limited budget (about 8 million dollars, according to the reports), the cast of “Tarot” includes mainly young names who are relatively unknown at the moment – Even though some of them look promising.
Harriet Slater (TV series “Pennyworth” and also a tiny role in “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny”) stars in the leading role. Jacob Batalon (Ned from “Spiderman”) managed to steal the show with an entertaining character. The cast also includes Avantika (the latest “Mean Girls” musical film), Edin Bradley (the last “Wrong Turn” and “The Bold and the Beautiful,” mercifully), Larsen Thompson (who appeared mainly in music videos, including as a dancer in a viral fan clip of ” Run the World (Girls)” by Beyoncé. I really can’t stand this song!).
I enjoyed watching beautiful Venezuelan actress Humberly González, who, during the movie, I tried to figure out where she looked familiar to me. My quick IMDB research showed that she played in two small and forgettable horror films that I have come across in recent years – “Killer High” (2018) and “Witches in the Woods” (2019) – yet I remembered her. So there might be something in her.
Beyond the acting, which ranges from successful, uneven, or disappointing, what bothered me is that some of the characters insist on doing everything to increase their chances of death. The script creates a kind of dissonance: on the one hand, there is death here which seems almost certain because that is what was written in the stars, cards, or whatever it may be. On the other hand, some characters do everything to die because that’s how it was written in the script, the story, or whatever. So we don’t really need the cards, if you know what I mean.
What Do The Cards Say: Should You Watch Tarot?
The reviews of the “Tarot” movie are pretty bad, with only 19% positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes or a Metascore of 36. At the box office, it did pretty reasonably, with just over $49 million worldwide as of writing these. As a horror fan, I would have been happy if the film had “sacrificed” its rating (PG-13) and chosen to go all the way, even at the rate of some damage to its grossings. It doesn’t have to be as extreme as Torture Porn, of course, but it does present a little more than what should define a horror film.
So, what’s the bottom line of this “Tarot” movie review? The movie has some fun moments, at least if you have low expectations. It will do the job if you are willing not to engage your brain for an hour and a half, and it is probably cheaper and safer than actual Tarot reading.
